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Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Is This Why We Women Don't Take No Sh*t?

The other day I was listening to Erykah Badu’s Call Tyrone (see above) oh how I lovvee that song! <3

with lyrics such as "I get tried of your shit, you don’t ever buy me nothing" and my favourite "now every time I ask you for a little cash, you say nah but turn right around and ask me for some ass" (I’m not sure why but that line is pure comedy to me!). It got me thinking is it because of songs like these we women don’t take no sh*t? lol

Hear me out …you see when it comes to women around my age I think we have been brought up on a healthy dose of girl power music not to mention books and films. From the Spice Girls "I tell ya what I want, what I really really want" (zigazig ah?) to Destiny’s Child "Can you pay my bills, can you pay my automo-bills" and least we forget TLC’s classic "I don’t want no scrub, a scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me!"

Those songs are like what spinach is to Popeye or avocado is to the Avacado Baby, they give us women strength when we need it! A little off course but I will be the first to admit when I was going through a particularly hard break up I had a cassette tape (yes I said cassette tape! haha) full of heartbreak anthems; Whitney’s heartbreak hotel, Changing Face’s ‘Get O.U.T' and the rest.

Anyway back to the point of my post listening to Erykah Badu just got me thinking is this why we women don’t take no sh*t? I mean we Run The World, right.

As well as listening to Spice Girls and Destiny's Child my love experiences were formed with a back drop of such great books (turned movies): Alice Walkers The Colour Purple and Terry MacMillian's Waiting to Exhale. In these books/films, the women are depicted as not only taking no sh*t, but overcoming the ish and then moving on stronger and doing ‘it’ for ourselves and men if needs be!

That coupled with other great books such as lyanla Vanzant’s In the Meantime quote:

"Love is the only thing we need, love is our joy, health and wealth. Love is our identity. We go into a relationship looking for love, not realising we must bring love with us. We must bring a strong sense of self and purpose into a relationship. We must bring a sense of value of who we are..."

"Sis just for a brief second, take a deep breath, close you eyes, clear your mind, and answer this question: What would it feel like to have someone love you just for being who you are, someone to love you in a way you never thought possible-a kind, generous, comfortable, yet exciting love. A love in which there are no cheating, no lies, no confusion and no disrespect..."

Is this the reason why we don’t take no sh*t? Maybe it’s because of Maya Angelou’s famous poem…

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me... (click here to continue to read)

Okay.. okay! Maybe it's not that we don’t take no sh*t but rather that we aspire to a higher vision of ourselves in terms of our lives, our love, our kids, our image and all the above-mentioned contributions to this way of thinking.

"Deservitude is a phrase [they] coined to describe the “I deserve” attitude [they're] seeing on increasing levels in many women today. It’s mostly prevalent amongst some delusional single women who seem to think that somehow they deserve to find a great man for no apparent reason other than that they just do. Nevermind that she might be a selfish, totally narcissistic bitch, of course she deserves it. Because she’s worth it."

"And deservitude can be observed when some black women believe they are being outshone by women of all other races because they’re not used in television and magazine ads. Or because somebody somewhere with some degree of authority may have said something to that effect, or not. Not all black women feel this way and I don’t want it to come across as though I mean it is de rigueur."

I think the above authors post was in response to a lot of things particularly the whole fuss around the black women are ugly study. Which by the way PsychToday issued an apology yesterday so it seems a collective deservitude produces small victories.

So anyways BDSS'ers I wrote all of the above to ask do we really not take any sh*t or are we just aspiring to a higher vision of ourselves? Or do we really just have a deservitude?!

NB: I ask this question because the other day me and my other half were bickering about me bringing him his meal, and he said something along the lines of "see, you been watching to many of them of them videoes!" (I think I was watching Beyonce) haha.

5 comments:

There's definitely a lot of girl power songs about and books and films lol! So I suppose that when your a young impressionable pre-teen and maybe teenager, you might be influenced by these things.

But I think as you get older it comes from looking around at situations in your life and deciding where you want to go and what it is you want and taking steps to get there. I think its about taking responsibility and ownership over your own life rather than diservitude or anything untoward or unhealthy.

I think there is a common misconception to band all black women with the same tag, so this diservitude tag is just one more to add to the list!

I think we are all different, some of us do take sh*t at different points in our life that eventually lead us to a higher vision or to have higher expectations for ourselves - wisdom. I hope to think that I'm at that point in my life, but still I accept there are still some things I will have to learn.

I songs Lauryn Hill and Nina Simone are my favourite 'Lift me up' artists, and Maya Angelou, well her books and poetry say it all!

I think most of us would like to think that we don’t ‘take no sh*t’ but in reality and as you gain more life experiences, I think it’s more a notion of aspiring to something more/better/deserved, all of which I suppose that is open to our individual interpretations.

Iyanla Vanzant seems to be able to articulate or if not, find the tones to express all the different stages and emotions of my relationships. Joss Stone is another that has the kind of voice that can convey the different moods and struggles of love.